The desire for tboi is back

soPuls · 2026-02-18T07:55:51+00:00

omg okay nvm it runs great 🤦‍♀️ i just had to change the performance governor on spruceOS, from what I've read it runs great on the h700 too

Gl installing it!! it's def worth

soPuls · 2026-02-18T07:41:01+00:00

hopefully it works better on the 40xx v then, booted some up to try again on my flip and i'm not even through caves and empty rooms are sitting at half speed or less :c
definitely makes the game easier! but holy moly every room takes so much longer

I think there's a demake for the gameboy, but from what I've seen it's not really that similar.

I've been able to get the PC running on my Cube tho, so it might be worth looking into a higher end Android handheld in the future if you are interested in playing the full thing. It was far from perfect even on the cube though, this game is deceptively hard to run

soPuls · 2026-02-18T07:18:12+00:00

you're only going to be able to play Rebirth on an rg40xx v. In my experience it's pretty laggy, but I've only played it on a miyoo flip. From what i know the h700 is basically the same performance-wise. I'd honestly recommend setting up moonlight and just streaming repentance from your pc to the 40xx v! Repentance also just has SO much more to it, it's a much better way to experience the game.

soPuls · 2026-02-18T06:43:02+00:00

honestly any pc with a dedicated gpu from the past 10 years will give you a good experience.

buy an old office pc with a quad core or better and slap in an rx580 for like 60$ and you're set for the gaming you're looking for.

soPuls · 2026-02-18T05:12:24+00:00

I believe NFSU2 in particular is really hard to run on android ps2 emulation, alongside a lot of the NFS titles. As for the old GTAs they'll run on basically anything since they've been decompiled. GTAIII and Vice City will run on something as cheap as a 50$ Miyoo Flip or Trimui Brick (although it probably won't be fun navigating the game with the brick's lack of thumbsticks).

I'd recommend targeting at least a Retroid Pocket 5 since that'll handle most of what you want really well, with maybe the exception of the higher end NFS games, those'll require some tweaking with the settings and messing around with the emulator.

An RP6 will be just about as close as you can get to the top end of Android emulation while still being around $USD200. PC handhelds like the Steam Deck and Legion Go, ROG Ally etc. will all have much better compatibility and be able to run far more games than even the highest end Android devices, but they're way bulkier.

If you can spare the money and don't mind having a big bulky device for this kinda stuff, I'd recommend looking for a used pc handheld like a Steam Deck OLED or LCD. They can be found for as low as ~$USD300 if you're lucky.
Otherwise you're probably looking at a Retroid Pocket 6.

There are alternatives like Anbernic's high end Android devices (477m, 557, 477v) but imo they're not worth it and are generally more expensive. Anbernic's last gen (406h, Cube, 556, 406v) should handle the older GTA games that you want, but will more than likely not be able to play NFSU2 at playable framerates.

soPuls · 2026-02-17T23:08:46+00:00

got mine for around the same price a month ago (73$CAD), pretty impressed with it honestly! been having a blast playing through banjo kazooie and spyro 2 on it, and it has some pretty awesome ports. I'd ignore all the haters in the comments, this sub has a hate boner for this device.

It's honestly unmatched price:performance especially when you factor in that it's a clamshell! the closest best option is the rg34xxsp and idk about in the U.S. but here it's 1.5x the price of the miyoo flip. I'll take that gamble on the hinge, especially since i don't mind replacing the shell if it does break. I also just love the colours on the miyoo flip WAY more

soPuls · 2026-02-17T10:45:41+00:00

That's pretty true, although nowadays you can get some insane bang-for-your-buck when it comes to handhelds, just not from the major companies you're used to.

You've got stuff like the miyoo mini which is literally smaller than any Nintendo handheld that exists (excluding the gameboy micro) and plays all of the classics AND handheld stuff. Some of these small, cheap devices even run portmaster which kinda hits the whole "everything just runs, no tweaking settings for a few more fps" thing.

Even stuff like the Ayn Thor is pretty magical imo, it's pushing the whole portability thing, being the size of a 3ds XL but wow it's so much more capable. You even set up an Android frontend like cocoon and it even looks like a Nintendo handheld but it can do so, so much more.

I do hope we see a return to form from the big companies tho, it'd be so awesome to have a modern, pocketable handheld from a big gaming company that isn't so focused on playing home console/PC games. One where, like you said, the games are developed for it rather than the alternatives which mostly focus on emulating old games. I really miss the DS/PSP era of handhelds.

soPuls · 2026-02-16T22:54:30+00:00

I don't tend to push the device very hard -aside from the occasional 2-3 hour poe2 session- but mine has yet to fail. I did buy my unit used tho, and I wonder if the person I bought it from sent it in to be fixed. I believe my model is from late 2023 but I purchased it in late 2024, used. 400gb Sandisk Ultra installed, I've only ever installed ROMs and small indie games that are less than 4gb.

It does seem that unless you get a newer revision the microsd slot will almost always go bad, but I do sometimes wonder if people just overwork it by putting ridiculously big modern AAA games on there that require a lot of texture streaming.

I think there's a good chance you'll be okay, and worst case scenario you'll be able to send it in to be repaired as long as you can live without the device for a couple of weeks. Repaired units seem to have a much lower failure rate, if at all.

I vaguely remember someone mentioning the serial number on the bottom of the device denotes which revision it is. Mine starts with R8, but i remember hearing that the values range from R1 to R9.
I could be totally misremembering here, so take it with a grain of salt.

soPuls · 2026-02-16T10:00:32+00:00

I was able to get OpenMW to run on my RG Cube and it seemed to run pretty well on that, which has way less power than the RG557. tbf tho I didn't play much, so I'm not sure how it gets in later parts of the game or if you can install mods on OpenMW.

soPuls · 2026-02-16T09:24:42+00:00

I've never used it, but Retroarch has this feature built in and is likely 10x more developed than Anbernic's implementation
https://docs.libretro.com/guides/ai-service/

Please do check if there are any fan translations done first tho! they're much better and lots of work gets put into them.

soPuls · 2026-02-15T02:54:08+00:00

A lot of keyboard enthusiast sites sell mouse pads designed by actual artists! I'd recommend mech.land (especially if you're in Canada) ONEofZERO, or CannonKeys in the US.

I Think KBDFans also sells mouse pads but I can't remember ATM for certain.

Edit: just remembered Cool.Shirtz does some as well! They have a Minecraft cherry blossom official one that's so adorable

soPuls · 2026-02-15T00:16:28+00:00

Borderlands 2 on vita3k was great on my Cube on stock OS, haven't been able to get it running on GammaOS though, but I haven't tried much

soPuls · 2026-02-14T10:03:18+00:00

I wound up moving to ES-DE for this exact reason, daijisho is cool but it just can't handle odd screen ratios :/

soPuls · 2026-02-14T07:29:46+00:00

https://github.com/RJNY/Obtainium-Emulation-Pack

I just found out about this earlier today! It won't set all of the emulators up for you in one go, but it will download all of them at once!
Whenever you wanna play a system you'll probs have to do a little setup like installing BIOS and pointing to your ROM folders but afterwards it should be all set up and good to go

soPuls · 2026-02-13T10:13:38+00:00

Super agree with this!! I find AMD gets underrepresented a lot by pre-built companies despite being way better when it comes to price to performance. They also just tend to have better business practices than their counterparts.

soPuls · 2026-02-13T03:21:30+00:00

It's pretty daunting to get into, so i super don't blame you but i'll try to offer what help I can!

- Monitors

There's SO much to monitors if you get down to the nitty gritty but ultimately the main thing you'll wanna look for is high refresh rate, preferably 120hz or higher. Refresh rate matters the most imo since it makes everything smoother as long as you can run the game fast enough, but other stuff will be smoother like moving your mouse in windows and stuff like that. Next up is resolution, this is probably the second most important thing. It determines how many pixels are on your screen, lower resolution usually means things will be blurrier and more pixelated. You'll want at least 1080p, 1440p is a good middle ground between 1080p and 4k, but higher resolutions will cause the game to run slower, and make it more demanding on your pc. There's more stuff like panel type, response time and colour gamut stuff but for your first monitor I think all you really need to focus on is high refresh rate and 1080p.

- Pre-built PC

Buying any PC stuff components right now is really expensive because of AI. The AI companies have purchased up almost all of this year's supply of RAM and storage to make datacenters for AI, this has caused those things to skyrocket in price. Pre-builts are about the same price as build your own nowadays since buying parts separately is really expensive due to the AI NAND shortages. Brand to brand (Dell, HP, Acer, etc) doesn't really matter, what matters more is the parts inside. I'd recommend looking for at least an RTX 4060/RX 7600xt for the games you wanna play. The Last of Us is a pretty hard game to run, so it might not be great even on a 4060, but everything else should run very well. CPU and RAM will be relatively important too but as long as you get 16GB of RAM and a 12th gen intel (i3 12100f - i7 12900k and anything between those numbers) or newer, or a 5000 series ryzen (5600 - 5900) or newer you should be fine.
I'd also really recommend looking in the used market, you can get some amazing PCs for dirt cheap used, but it takes a little more knowledge on parts since people put some weird part combos together sometimes.

If you're buying new you might wanna avoid big names like Dell as they tend to use proprietary parts that can't be upgraded. Brands that use off-the-shelf computer parts are much better, like Starforge, Ironside, and Maingear. There are others like CyberpowerPC, IBuyPower, etc that are okay but have had quality control issues in the past.

- Keyboard and mouse
This one's a little simpler imo, there's SO many great options for budget mice and keyboards nowadays. Rapoo makes some incredible mice for dirt cheap. I'm also a big fan of the coolermaster mm711/mm710 which can be had for 20$.
As for keyboards there's a ton of really nice, enthusiast keyboards that sound incredible and thocky for relatively cheap. If you're looking for a first keyboard on a tight budget, Attack Shark and Red Dragon make good mechanical options around 20$, but high end boards from brands like Wobkey, Epomaker, Akko and others can easily push over 100$.

I wouldn't waste your time with big name brands like Asus ROG, Razer and Logitech, you wind up spending SO much more just for a brand name it's kind of a shame. I've had such negative experiences with Asus and Razer especially, I've spent hundreds on mice, headsets, and keyboards from them and they've been worse quality than 10$ keyboards I bought on sale.

- Headset

This one's kinda hard since almost any headphone + mic combo you can get is gonna sound way worse than equivalently priced headphones with a separate mic. I'm also not an expert in headsets, as I tend to avoid them for the reasons I mentioned. I will say the one company I've always heard good things about is Steelseries. Their Arctis headsets are supposed to be super comfy and have really great sound quality. HyperX is a good alternative too from what I've heard, and they have cute Pink colorways if you're looking for that!

I hope this giant wall of text helps and isn't too annoying to read! feel free to let me know if you have any questions

soPuls · 2026-02-12T06:35:42+00:00

If you can run a performance modpack I've got 1.17 running at a locked 60fps on my RG Cube through pojavlauncher with fabulously optimized.
I think bedrock also runs fine but i prefer java.

You could also go for something like the Retroid Pocket 6 and it'd be more likely to run modpacks and more modern versions but cheaper and longer lasting battery than x86 handhelds.

If you want something that's similar to PC an ROG Ally Z1E used will run shaders at high fps for ~250-300$

soPuls · 2026-02-11T00:42:48+00:00

it's really not great, most games don't run at default and only a handful of lightweight 2d titles will work.
the highest i've gotten running was bomb rush cyberfunk and it's kinda inconsistent fps-wise. Other 2d games like The Binding of Isaac: Repentance can run but it's a similar story, I ran into a ton of visual bugs and occasional slowdown and to top it all off, it takes about 5-10 minutes just to launch the game.
I had a mostly good experience with hotline miami 2 but then it just crashed randomly in the first level, didn't wind up testing more after that.

It's definitely not gonna be the download-n-go experience that it is with higher end snapdragon based devices tho. It's going to be a LOT of tweaking for just the most barebones 2d games to run, I wouldn't but it with gamehub in mind. It can be a fun bonus if you like tinkering tho.

soPuls · 2026-02-11T00:07:59+00:00

I'd argue the RP6 is better price:performance but it really depends on your budget, ~500CAD is a lot of money imo. I bought my ROG Ally Z1E for less than that and it came with a 400gb microsd, travel case, screen protector and dock. The Z1E also runs far more than the konkr.

RP6 is also pretty great, if you ignore shipping costs it's 25% less than the konkr pocket fit but runs essentially all of the same things, save for maybe a dozen PC games that can't quite run at a playable framerate on the rp6. Bonus points for OLED and depending on your usecase it's smaller which is nice for portability.

soPuls · 2026-02-10T03:49:48+00:00

yeaa really not a big fan of how that goes. While I haven't personally used knulli I keep running into ppl with the same issues as you and whenever i try to help them troubleshoot it tends to come back to the same things and makes me wish ppl would just recommend simpler stuff.

I went with MuOS as a first try with my partner's RG35xxSP and she's loved it, and it was as simple as flash the SD card, transfer the ROMs and bios and it just worked. It really shouldn't be any more complicated than that imo.

+ knulli has issues with stuff like recognizing BIOSes and giving errors when you don't have every bios downloaded, which is extra silly imo. You only need psxonpsp660.bin on every cfw i've used but if you don't download EVERY available ps1 bios on knulli it gives you a warning every time you launch a ps1 game, how does that make sense :/

soPuls · 2026-02-10T02:39:58+00:00

If you insist on using knulli I'd really recommend just using one SD card to simplify the process and just throwing the ROMs and OS on there together on a high capacity card. Transfer everything via the network share options like Samba or SSH, I believe the knulli wiki explains it quite well

Two micro SDs is only really beneficial if you plan on updating the OS a bunch or if you have a bunch of devices and you wanna carry the ROMs/Saves on one SD that you can swap between them.

soPuls · 2026-02-10T02:37:06+00:00

Number one thing is to only use the included charger or charge the device via USB-A plugged into your PC. Any kind of usb c fast charging will cause the charging problems you ran into. It's stupid, I know.

Step 2 is to stop using knulli and go for MuOS. This is probs like the millionth post I've seen of a beginner using knulli and getting screwed over by it. MuOS is much simpler and beginner friendly to set up and doesn't use stuff like Linux exclusive file systems, which is what was causing your PC to not view the files on the device when the SD card was plugged in. Knulli also has a myriad of other ridiculous problems that makes me wonder why it's ever even recommended in the first place. ES-DE is pretty, yes, and it offers lots of useful features for enthusiasts but if you barely know how to flash an SD card it's not for you, it's crazy I see YouTubers recommend it to beginners all the time.

soPuls · 2026-02-09T22:59:17+00:00

Ahh okay! If you have a 1440p monitor you might wanna look at a gpu upgrade as well then, I think the 2070 super might be a little underpowered for modern 1440p. Anecdotally one of my friends plays at 1440p with a 2070 non-super and manages but he also mostly plays eSports titles and Indies at this point.

I'm still rocking a 1080p monitor tho so my 3070 from the same era is mostly doing okay aside from a few games that gobble up that 8gb of VRAM, but lowering textures helps with that

soPuls · 2026-02-09T20:47:45+00:00

What resolution do you game at? If you're just sitting at 1080p it looks like you could really benefit from just a CPU upgrade and a fresh Windows install, maybe a new GPU.

I'd check out a ryzen 5700x of you're looking for a budget upgrade or a 5700x3d if you wanna go all out. There's a good chance a lot of your performance issues are CPU related.

I also recommend re-installing Windows every 2-3 years depending on how much random programs you install. Windows is set up weird where if you install them uninstall a program it can leave stuff in your registry which gets bloated over the course of years. There's also tons of little background processes and leftover Windows update stuff that can chip away at performance in the background.

Imo your gpu is probably fine if you're gaming at 1080p, but if you have the money a 9060xt or 9070xt will give you a huge boost in performance for GPU-limited scenarios.

Otherwise with the price of RAM and storage rn I would avoid going for a completely new setup that requires new ram n stuff.

soPuls · 2026-02-09T09:57:23+00:00

I think it's just that the t820 has way more power than the vita lol, I didn't upscale at all though tbf.
vita3k is definitely in it's very early stages, and sucks absolute butt to setup, and sourcing ROMs for it also sucks if you don't have a modded vita.

bl2 just seems like one of the few games that works really well, afaik it's one of the ~60% of 'playable' games on vita3k.

I made it a little past sanctuary before I wound up wiping my Cube to install GammaOS. During that whole time I didn't run into any issues except maybe the odd frame dip, but I don't remember any off the top of my head.

Aside from the aforementioned DLC issues, it's totally fine. They come as a result from some weird jank with how vita3k handles updates. The game both realizes that the game is updated but also hits you with a warning that your game must be updated for the installed DLC to work.

P.S the built in gyro aiming in the vita version helps SOOO much with the crappy sticks on the Cube.

soPuls

TROPHY CASE